co-authors are other participants quoted. I haven't changed content of thr replies, but quoted it part by part in my replies, interspersing each reply after relevant part. Sometimes I have also changed the order of replies with my retorts, so as to prioritate logical/topical over temporal/chronological connexions. That has also involved conflating more than one message. I have also left out mere insults.

Russian Orthodox sources from same time (under Lithuanian supremacy or under the Czars) would have given similar age limits.

Resist Meta-Man!

Evolutionary biologists are discussing whether we have passed or will be passing the next evolutionary big step. Resumée of big steps so far - according to evolution:

1.) self reproducing molecules join hands in protocaryatide cells;

2.) those in eucaryatide cells;

3.) those in many celled animals;

4.) ants, bees and maybe now men join hands in hives;

5.) not to mention that all the train companies ruined by Vanderbilt, all the petrol companies ruined by Rockefeller and so on were bought up by the capitalists who ruined them - unlike the other steps one that has really been ascertained.

If humanity becomes a hive, it is termed a "meta man"*. Of which men all over earth, domestic animals, machines, buildings, textiles, satellite communications all over the globe are organs, just as DNA inmitochondria, mitochondria in our cells, our cell in ourselves. The final steps to meta man would include:

a) mankind stopping wars between its men,

b) mankind regulating the procreation of men,

c) the development of a consciousness of mankind, that is really the consciousness of noone in particular, reached by immediate majority votes on the smallest details of things which in their whole are beyond - or are put beyond - single men.

This last step is supposed to be a parallel to the human consciousness being the consciousness of no brain cell in particular, only the sum of all brain cells in general.

But this is not what human consciousness is, man being - unlike brain cells and majority votes - endowed with reason, and it will not work like this for "meta man". The elimination of wars and the central control of human fertility - on lines suggested by Monsanto seeds, that will grow and yield fruit only for one generation, after which next year's seed will have to be bought from Monsanto - this will, if at all, not happen because all humans vote through these losses of independence, case for case, though it could be fooled into voting through the principle or a seemingly reasonable application of it in a panicked situation: no, this will, if at all, be controlled by an elite that considers itself to be for mankind what the brain is for a single man.

The simile between man and his organs on one hand, society and its men on the other, is ancient. So is the simile between a leg that has to be amputated for the good of man and a criminal that has to be executed - maybe hunted down first - for the good of society. It was older than the Church and it was used by both Christ and St Paul about the Church: the parallel to execution being excommunication. The problem begins when the simile, a biological picture for non-biological things, is introduced into biology and taken for the biological principle for a new animal. When birth, food, security of life or death of individual men all depend on the BIOLOGICAL needs of a single animal humanity that is fiction - or a misused concept that parodies and hides the real biological needs. Would you like to be "amputated" - killed, starved or sterilised - because you did not dedicate yourself whole-heartedly to serve the hive? Resist "meta man". Resist the beast.

*Source for the speculations: www.pm-magazin.de the paper version of January 2005 issue.

Human history does not reach back to a past eternity. Epicure suggested periodic disasters (he would have loved the story of Noah’s Ark … or for certain reasons not) which wipe out human achievements and this would include the predisaster history, forcing us to begin all over again. I take a less bleak view on mankind’s capacity on recording a disaster and what went on before it and handing it down to future generations - even if Genesis 2 - 7 is fairly sketchy as historiography goes (I think Mahabharata gives more detail on the Cainite side).

Some processes have been discovered to go on in one direction. A process like the water cycle is no problem for Aristotle (who had somewhat incorrect views on water cycle, partly due to his sources for geography not being as reliable as he) or for Epicure, but Helium being produced from Hydrogen + Hydrogen and this never reversing, well, this is a problem for a steady state eternal universe.

Michele De Solda

23h ago

Thanks Hans, a couple of cool reference. I have to check the helium one and I had sooner or later study seriously Aristotle’s metaphysics. What you mean with “steady universe”? Infinite in time, no beginning and no end?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Exact, infinite in time, no beginning, no end, and no major diversification between its qualities, only minor vaccillations, mostly on a local level (like the world wide disasters or culture wide disasters would be).

Fighting Totalitarian takeovers?

"Just war doctrine attempts to define situations wherein the waging of war becomes a moral necessity. It lays out criteria by which a Christian is intended to determine whether or not a specific war was entered into and is conducted in a virtuous manner, that killing becomes a moral necessity. The doctrine was developed by theologians of great influence in much of non-Orthodox Western Christianity, such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. This principle was the underpinning of Roman Catholic doctrinal support for the Crusades, presumably including the Fourth Crusade."

Pope Innocent III certainly thought that the war he was planning against the Saracens was just: not that the sack of Constantinople, which he had expressly forbidden, was; though he took advantage of that injustice after it was committed. A doctrine does not cease to be true because it can be or even has been misapplied.

"By contrast, Orthodox Christianity has never developed an explicit "just war" doctrine, and the weight of Tradition is that the taking of human life is never a morally edifying act, although circumstances may require that such an act be taken, it would only be as an alternative to an even greater evil."

The Roman Catholic doctrine about just war IS precisely that war is only just when the alternative is a greater evil, i e an extremely unjust "peace" tantamount to slavery under robbers or something like that. It may be added that one of the criteria is a reasonable hope to really avoid the evils greater than those of not fighting.